Nick Miller Kauffman
Master of Arts
After four years at Manchester College, I found my thirst for knowledge was far from quenched. I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in peace studies, but I didn't want to push on into the social sciences. With Bethany's master's degree in theology with a peace studies emphasis, I saw an opportunity to continue studying the peace and justice issues that so impassion me from the humanities perspective, and that I found so enlivening in my final year of college. Here I can study, learn, and prepare for whatever comes next. I am on first-name terms with a faculty that is committed to me--something that would be hard to find at a larger school. And I can see already that the same issues that excite me are exciting to my professors.
Conversations about the divine have always been interesting to me, but they have always taken place in the informal settings of dining halls and dorm rooms. At seminary, I can enrich those conversations by entering them at new and deeper levels and with understandings that I could not have had with a Sunday school education. And I get to do this in a community that is informed by the Church of the Brethren values and culture that, for me, have been such a central aspect of my identity that they have come to be synonymous with family. For all these reasons, I said yes to the Master of Arts program at Bethany.